calling of the gleaners, and the festivals of praise!
The very rain, and sleet, and hail seem only Nature's useful servants

when found doing their simple duties in the country; and the East Wind
himself is nothing worse than a boisterous friend when we meet him

between the hedge-rows.
But in the city where the painted stucco blisters under the smoky sun,

and the sooty rain brings slush and mud, and the snow lies piled in
dirty heaps, and the chill blasts whistle down dingy streets and

shriek round flaring gas lit corners, no face of Nature charms us.
Weather in towns is like a skylark in a counting-house--out of place

and in the way. Towns ought to be covered in, warmed by hot-water
pipes, and lighted by electricity. The weather is a country lass and

does not appear to advantage in town. We liked well enough to flirt
with her in the hay-field, but she does not seem so fascinating when

we meet her in Pall Mall. There is too much of her there. The frank,
free laugh and hearty voice that sounded so pleasant in the dairy jars

against the artificiality of town-bred life, and her ways become
exceedingly trying.

Just lately she has been favoring us with almost incessant rain for
about three weeks; and I am a demned damp, moist, unpleasant body, as

Mr. Mantalini puts it.
Our next-door neighbor comes out in the back garden every now and then

and says it's doing the country a world of good--not his coming out
into the back garden, but the weather. He doesn't understand anything

about it, but ever since he started a cucumber-frame last summer he
has regarded himself in the light of an agriculturist, and talks in

this absurd way with the idea of impressing the rest of the terrace
with the notion that he is a retired farmer. I can only hope that for

this once he is correct, and that the weather really is doing good to
something, because it is doing me a considerableamount of damage. It

is spoiling both my clothes and my temper. The latter I can afford,
as I have a good supply of it, but it wounds me to the quick to see my

dear old hats and trousers sinking, prematurely worn and aged, beneath
the cold world's blasts and snows.

There is my new spring suit, too. A beautiful suit it was, and now it
is hanging up so bespattered with mud I can't bear to look at it.

That was Jim's fault, that was. I should never have gone out in it
that night if it had not been for him. I was just trying it on when

he came in. He threw up his arms with a wild yell the moment be
caught sight of it, and exclaimed that he had "got 'em again!"

I said: "Does it fit all right behind?"
"Spiffin, old man," he replied. And then he wanted to know if I was

coming out.
I said "no" at first, but he overruled me. He said that a man with a

suit like that bad no right to stop indoors. "Every citizen," said
he, "owes a duty to the public. Each one should contribute to the

general happiness as far as lies in his power. Come out and give the
girls a treat."

Jim is slangy. I don't know where he picks it up. It certainly is
not from me

I said: "Do you think it will really please 'em?" He said it would
be like a day in the country to them.

That decided me. It was a lovely evening and I went.
When I got home I undressed and rubbed myself down with whisky, put my

feet in hot water and a mustard-plaster on my chest, had a basin of
gruel and a glass of hot brandy-and-water, tallowed my nose, and went

to bed.
These prompt and vigorous measures, aided by a naturally strong

constitution, were the means of preserving my life; but as for the
suit! Well, there, it isn't a suit; it's a splash-board.

And I did fancy that suit, too. But that's just the way. I never do
get particular{y fond of anything in this world but what something

dreadful happens to it. I had a tame rat when I was a boy, and I
loved that animal as only a boy would love an old water-rat; and one

day it fell into a large dish of gooseberry-fool that was standing to
cool in the kitchen, and nobody knew what had become of the poor

creature until the second helping.
I do hate wet weather in town. At least, it is not so much the wet as

the mud that I object to. Somehow or other I seem to possess an
irresistible alluring power over mud. I have only to show myself in

the street on a muddy day to be half-smothered by it. It all comes of
being so attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck by

lightning. Other people can go out on dirty days and walk about for
hours without getting a speck upon themselves; while if I go across

the road I come back a perfect disgrace to be seen (as in my boyish
days my poor dear mother tried often to tell me). If there were only

one dab of mud to be found in the whole of London, I am convinced I
should carry it off from all competitors.

I wish I could return the affection, but I fear I never shall be able
to. I have a horror of what they call the "London particular." I

feel miserable and muggy all through a dirty day, and it is quite a
relief to pull one's clothes off and get into bed, out of the way of

it all. Everything goes wrong in wet weather. I don't know how it
is, but there always seem to me to be more people, and dogs, and

perambulators, and cabs, and carts about in wet weather than at any
other time, and they all get in your way more, and everybody is so

disagreeable--except myself--and it does make me so wild. And then,
too, somehow I always find myself carrying more things in wet weather

than in dry; and when you have a bag, and three parcels, and a
newspaper, and it suddenly comes on to rain, you can't open your

umbrella.
Which reminds me of another phase of the weather that I can't bear,

and that is April weather (so called because it always comes in May).
Poets think it very nice. As it does not know its own mind five

minutes together, they liken it to a woman; and it is supposed to be
very charming on that account. I don't appreciate it, myself. Such

lightning-change business may be all very agreeable in a girl. It is
no doubt highly delightful to have to do with a person who grins one

moment about nothing at all, and snivels the next for precisely the
same cause, and who then giggles, and then sulks, and who is rude, and

affectionate, and bad-tempered, and jolly, and boisterous, and silent,
and passionate, and cold, and stand-offish, and flopping, all in one

minute (mind, I don't say this. It is those poets. And they are
supposed to be connoisseurs of this sort of thing); but in the weather

the disadvantages of the system are more apparent. A woman's tears do
not make one wet, but the rain does; and her coldness does not lay the

foundations of asthma and rheumatism, as the east wind is apt to. I
can prepare for and put up with a regularly bad day, but these

ha'porth-of-all-sorts kind of days do not suit me. It aggravates me
to see a bright blue sky above me when I am walking along wet through,

and there is something so exasperating about the way the sun comes out
smiling after a drenching shower, and seems to say: "Lord love you,

you don't mean to say you're wet? Well, I am surprised. Why, it was
only my fun."

They don't give you time to open or shut your umbrella in an English
April, especially if it is an "automaton" one--the umbrella, I mean,

not the April.
I bought an "automaton" once in April, and I did have a time with it!

I wanted an umbrella, and I went into a shop in the Strand and told
them so, and they said:

"Yes, sir. What sort of an umbrella would you like?"
I said I should like one that would keep the rain off, and that would

not allow itself to be left behind in a railway carriage.
"Try an 'automaton,'" said the shopman.

"What's an 'automaton'?" said I.
"Oh, it's a beautiful arrangement," replied the man, with a touch of

enthusiasm. "It opens and shuts itself."